Suggestions for....

[DayDreamer88]

Hi. New member here. Hopefully I’m going about posting this the right way and such. Anyway, I’m in the process of customizing my BK-2... stripped paint last night and I’m planning on doing some file work on the spine.. but it is a bit rough(striations from machining) and will need to be smoothed out before I can proceed with file work. My question is, does anyone have suggestions on the best method for doing this? Any insight would be appreciated. Thanks in advance.

 

[catspa]

Welcome to Bladeforums! We have a sub-forum this would fit right in with, it’s called Maintenance, Tinkering and Embellishment. Members there are always messing with and modifying stuff.

Unfortunately I don’t know how to get your post transferred over there, but I bet one of the moderators does. Let’s see if we can get their attention.

Parker

 

[BitingSarcasm]

Hi. New member here. Hopefully I’m going about posting this the right way and such. Anyway, I’m in the process of customizing my BK-2... stripped paint last night and I’m planning on doing some file work on the spine.. but it is a bit rough(striations from machining) and will need to be smoothed out before I can proceed with file work. My question is, does anyone have suggestions on the best method for doing this? Any insight would be appreciated. Thanks in advance.

There is a lot of information and help available in the Becker Knife subforum, too, it's worth a look. Under the coating, Beckers tend to be a bit rough. It cuts down on price by reducing machining time and also gives the coating a better chance to stick by increasing surface area. The ones I've stripped have been pretty smooth, but I've seen pictures of super rough metal underneath. If you intend a forced patina, one with a pattern will disguise a surprising amount of striation on the blade. Otherwise, you will be sanding it out until you reach a level of smoothness that works for you.

The trick is to start at a grit that just wipes out the roughness that you see, leaving scratches that you will remove with a higher grit level. The process then gets repeated until you declare yourself satisfied. The 2 has a lot of steel to play with, maybe start at 80 grit to see if that is aggressive enough--if it feels like it's cutting too deep, go higher grit. Follow it off with 120 or 140, follow that with something in the 200s, then 400, then 600. If you are using a belt sander, be aware of the heat that is going to creep up. If you cant touch the metal with a bare hand, the thin cutting edge may be getting the temper burned out. Keep a tub of water on hand, dunk frequently, but dry and oil it before you put it aside, it's now bare carbon steel. Doing it by hand takes longer but it's really hard to overheat it that way. They sell packs of sandpaper at my local car parts shop in the bodywork aisle that have a couple pieces of a bunch of grits going from low number dry grit to high number wet sand grit.